Today’s mobile phones and PDA’s need a lot of power. That’s always an issue for outdoor fans if you’re miles away from a power source. Especially iPhone users do know the problem when all network services are enabled. There are a lot of charging solutions out there on the marked. A lot of them are okay, but many have one drawback: they can just be charged via 230V or 12V supplies. What can be done if you are in the wildness? Appropriate solar systems are often expensive or do have poor performance parameters. After some research we found an interesting solution from SWISSBATTERIES.COM. It’s an all-in-one charging system that offers many features for a low price. It’s based on a 2200mAh (the new model has even a better performance) battery and a flexible solar panel. The battery can be charged via 230V-, 12V-, 5V USB adapters and of course the solar panel. My experience with the system is good. I carried the parts through the mountains of Norway. Partly I stuffed the panel into my rucksack – it didn’t suffer at all. The full battery is able to charge my iPhone 2,5 times. And the good thing is: with this solution it is possible to realistically recharge the battery completely on a sunny day. Nice features for outdoor fans: the battery comes along with an included LED torch and the weight is low: approx. 100g for the panel and 85g for the battery. So you’ll get a power solution for less than 200g!

We’ll be up to NEW YORK CITY soon. Contrary to my last outdoor trip to JOTUNHEIMEN we are now preparing for the urban wildness. We are very exited what is waiting for us. The list of all the points of interest is getting longer and longer. It seems that we can’t visit them all. But anyway, somehow we’ll make it. For sure we will leave some space in the luggage for the return trip…

Another project: based on a former version I built a new, mobile bot. It will be an autonomous vehicle that can solve different tasks. It is equipped with light-, compass-, touch-, sound-, and ultrasonic- sensors. The code will be based on the JAVA / LEJOS library. The code basis (not perfect but enough for experimentation) can be found on HUMYO.